I think the NPCs are ripe with potential for a small, 10-15-ish card Automa deck to mix it up round-to-round.
3 Likes
What do they do when they have no valid target in the behavior? Fallback to basic flying between planets?
1 Like
La Citta - a very tight spatial game of trying to expand your hex cities on a map with hex buildings, house it with your citizens, but the game forces you to compete with your neighbouring cities by having the best sanitation or education or culture depending on what the âvoice of the peopleâ demand. By having the better, say, sanitation, you steal one citizen from those cities. This deprives them of the workforce to operate the buildings and they are destroyed due to them being unused, shrinking the cities.
I really love the idea, but Iâm a bit concerned on how stagnant the action card shop is (but BGG suggested a great houserule for this). And the âvoice of the peopleâ feel random since there are 4 cards but only 1 of them are face-up. But I will try with the variant suggested and see if it made the players more dynamic.
Castles of Tuscany - would you believe it? I enjoyed a Euro! And itâs by Feld, of all the people. CoT works so well to me, I guess, because it whips pretty fast. It has some strategic depth with the way you can set up your own map, how you tackle the resulting spatial puzzle, how you build your engine, and with the points tempo. If you can score 3 pts for finishing a region on Phase 1, youâll score that again in phase 2 and 3. I donât think I can touch Castle of Burgundy ever again.
Not something I would buy as there are Euros I prefer, but Iâll be eager to play this again.
Quartermaster General 1st Edition - the simplest of all QMG titles. I love how the pts incentives are adjusted to follow the historical path of WW2. But it still allows ahistoric outcomes, Britain tried to knock out Italy via invasion from the Med Sea. I attempted to the North Sea as Germany to invade Britain, rather than focusing against the Soviets. It was a bad mistake, as the USSR got its engine set up and pretty much kept sending waves of armies.
In terms of âFun factorâ: this one seems to be the best. But I think I prefer QMG 1914âs tense and tight gameplay. The divergence of strategic paths are more interesting in 1914 too. Pretty much all factions in 1914 got different paths to go for.
So it goes like this:
- 1914
- WW2 (1st edition)
- The Cold War
- The Peloponnesian War
Lost Cities: To Go - This guy, I swear. A remix of the OG Lost Cities: the Card Game. But instead of discarding cards on their respective discard pile, you both have a shared pool of tiles and you reveal a tile face-up and decide if you keep it in the drafting pool or you want to play it on your tableau. The tile/card play and scoring is still the same: play betting tiles first if you wish and then tiles in ascending order. You penalise yourself with 20 pts as your initial capital on an expedition you started and sum your net score.
Gave it to a friend.
Sumeria - interesting area control game. Need more plays.
Parade - Really enjoy this. The madness of trying to earning loads of penalty pts to reduce them to -1 per card is just hilarious.
3 Likes
Have you played Burgundy? Because I have that and like it, I am hesitant to buy âkinda the same thingâ again.
Somehow this slipped into one of my recent orders for 3⏠but we have yet to play. As small as the box is, it is mostly air inside, too. We have no other Lost Cities iteration so I thought for that price I cant go wrong.
1 Like
Yes. I have played Burgundy. I find them different. The removal of the dice rolls changed the game in which I am less constraint on what I can do. Tuscany even (to some extent) let the players push the speed of the game.
I was looking for similarities and making a mental list and I only end up with these: both Castles got the hex bits and they are of different types that gives different bonuses, and that both follows the âexpand from your starting castleâ rule. You score if you bingo a region - the larger, the better.
1 Like
Donât know about Xia as I have not played it, but Star Wars: Outer Rim has an AI deck for solo play which basically gives a flowchart of actions to perform, if able.
Maybe there is something similar for Xia out there?
2 Likes
Yeah I was going to suggest the same. The Xia community content is apparently stuffed with quality modules, a lot of it championed and hosted on the Far Off Gamesâ website, from what I understand. I suspect thereâs a bunch of good stuff to dip into and really season the game to taste.
2 Likes
I managed to play a game with my partner! Woo!
A quick and breezy (and introductory) game of Fleet The Dice Game, which was quite satisfying. I own 80 to 77, but it was nice how you had this constant flow of âstuff happeningâ. Lots of star actions, and I think we mis-used the Shrimp License (we used it to be âShrimp are wildâ, but I think itâs supposed to be âShrimp can be any fishâ⌠Iâll have to check the rules again).
I think this may be my partnerâs favourite Roll nâ Write so far. Which is a relief⌠I love the genre, but sheâs been very lukewarm on it.
7 Likes
I think itâs shrimp can be anything on the fish dice (so not the crab but can be the coins)
3 Likes
Yep. The Shrimp licence lets you choose any face on the boat die (including shrimp) when selected. This [also] means you canât use the ability when the shared die is a shrimp. You can use it in the town phase if selected as well, but again, only for the boat die faces.
Going deep on the shrimp licences is a big, blunt hammer and itâs damned effective. If someone starts working their way down that path, the rest of the table need to start counter-picking fast.
2 Likes
I was called back home as our eldest child was sick, and my OH had a graduation today at work, so while she was sleeping, and after tidying up the house and vacuuming the carpets like a good dad, I set up a solo game of Firefly.
This time I house ruled the solo and went for the Harken story. I was counting the turns as a mere indication, as I started without crew, and managed to beat the final objective within 30 turns (I am not sure if it was 27 or 28). Really lucky to hitch Wash (+1 move in full burn flights) and one of the best core drives (2 spaces mosey and no breakdowns) with Mal as a captain. I even found Zoe in Silverhold.
I find the Grifter+Companion characters to be a bit OP in solo mode, so I house ruled that if the other cards that make yours disappear (if purchased by anybody else) appeared at all, I lost mine. Still with that imposed self-hindrance I pulled through with a couple of good item cards (Vera and Kayleigh own hacking device).
And all in about an hour, hour and a quarter tops. I donât even feel bad for it 
7 Likes
Yesterday I played a lot of Railroad Ink. Iâm working my way through the expansions to see how they change the game. So far I think the city building and alien farmer dice from the futuristic expansion are my favourite, but the tetronimo die is also fun I skipped a couple of the arcade expansions because I was playing solo and they require you to draw on other peopleâs boards, so Iâll be interested to see how that changes a multiplayer game.
8 Likes
Generally known as âYoSaffBridgeâ. 
That seems like a sensible house rule.
2 Likes
Some games on Wednesday evening with our game group:
Concordia, always a winner. Definitely shouldâve bought more cards - my board control was good, but shouldâve worked in an extra tribune or two in the mid game to snag cards.
Start Ups, we played two games of this - itâs such a great little game, tense and full of risk taking and the possibility of things going terribly wrong. My second game ended with only 5 coins, having won none of the majorities at all! 
Point Salad, great fun, certainly at lower playercounts where thereâs less turnover of cards. Won our game of this, so nice way to finish a night where I otherwise lost everythingâŚ
2 Likes
Yog-Sothoth, you say?
2 Likes
I have been playing non stop async Hardback duels on BGA with my friend. We are at game 6 for the week. It is addictive. I want to note neither of us is a native speaker⌠if we ever get together to play my German copy I expect boundless hilarity as we struggle to reconcile with a ânewâ language.
Last game was my worst loss so far with 70 to 42 points or so. She is trying out all the color combos⌠however that time her strategy was to buy whatever gave a bonus without a combo never mind colors. I still struggled to buy cards when the game was overâŚ
6 Likes
Pulling one of my cheats here, but Iâve laid out and have successfully taught Black Rose Wars to my partner, which is actually pretty simple to do. We had just barely enough time to dig into the mechanics of the cardplay, symbology and schools, etc. however, so we should be just about ready to pick a wizard and get to wizard fighting (hopefully) this evening.
Iâm pretty apprehensive about the PvP focus of the game, but I remain confident that itâs got a nice combination of mechanics that will really push my partnerâs buttons if sheâs receptive to a few games. Then thereâs the challenge of whether or not I like it! 
We shall see soon!
3 Likes
We played a 2 player 10 Fame game of Xia yesterday which I am happy to say my partner won. We both managed to crash our respective ships in the first couple of turns and the game was largely peaceful, the only shots fired were by NPCs. Instead we explored nearly everythingânaturally the tile I needed for my mission was the last one in the stack.
I managed to gain the Daredevil title just before my partner won the game partially due to the weird rolling D20 that gave us way too many 20 and 1 results. I think we need to use other dice 
I only figured out during this game that there are just 2 âlawfulâ planets and that I could still enter neutral ones even if I had a bounty. Not that I ever did anything to incur a bounty. There just wasnât enough time. edit: My partner managed to blind jump through a planetary shield and obtained a bounty that way. He upgraded his ship the next turn thoughâŚ
1 Like
I would be keen on playing BRW again. I remember getting so pissed off at the quest cards and the trap cards - literally called Trap cards.
Kingâs Road - a Knizia area majority by Grail Games. Pretty good, but not sure if I want it enough. The simultaneous action selection is neato. Second guessing your friends is fun. The timing questions is interesting because the area that will score is the one where the king is currently sitting on, and the route connection bit a la Taj Mahal is a nice addition.
Sumatra - a set collecting game from Knizia⌠Itâs okay. Thereâs tension on when to close the public drafting round or which set collection you wanna go for. But, eh. I want more player interaction. Will be selling this.
Medici: the Card Game - Yeah. Waaay prefer this set collecting game. And it comes in a small box. Yes, it has area majority, which is why I prefer it. Basically, Medici but without the auction.
Renature Damn. The dominoes in this thing is pretty neat. The game is mean as usual. Would like to know if it continues to excel after 5+ plays
Deception
Loot - It seems to put the player that draws more merchant ships at a disadvantage, but would like to play more to see.
4 Likes
Hopefully pissed off in the best kind of way! It seems like the kind of game that requires predictive and reactive play⌠simultaneously, which is an interesting proposition to me.
[EDIT] Realized Iâm describing basically any PvP card game there. For anyone unfamiliar, Black Rose Wars presents a classic mage fight card duel, in a pseudo-euro-DoaM format.